Action Item Tracking

[jtwitchell]

As we all all very aware there ends up being a lot of lists that we have to manage to keep the ward running well. One thing we have started to do is track members as they move into the wards to make sure they get the initial visits and a bunch of other actions. I was looking at Google Spreadsheets. Good for tracking info, but we really want something that is more checklist oriented. Looking at using Trello as a potential way to track the info. What is everyone using to track these types of action items that can be shared with everyone on the Ward Council? The question that came up today was is there something that already exists within the current toolset that can do this?

[sbradshaw]

I work with someone who's a bishop, and uses Trello for his ward (send me a private message if you want his email address). If you're using any online services, be sure that you don't upload or enter in private membership info for your members (per the Meetinghouse Technology Policy).

[jtwitchell]

Good point about the Meetinghouse Technology Policy. I will want to review that policy again.

[Davo.Benjamin@gmail.com]

The Stake President asked me to come up with an action item tracking system the various stake meetings.
Stake Presidency, High Council, Stake Council, Stake Bishops council, etc.
I looked at a number of professional tools, the one I liked most was Monday.com, but it was too expensive.
So I just used Google sheets. You can check it out, I've created a free access model to all.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... drive_link

It automatically propagates the status if an action item gets Assigned or cancelled or deadline missed, etc.

I looked at Trello and Asana. I preferred Asana because it has a list display option.
But the drawback to both was that in order to create teams you needed a custom mail account.
You cannot create teams using just a Gmail account.

Unless the Church comes up with it's own automated action items tracking system the spreadsheet option is the simplest to use.

If you want to use the spreadsheet option I provided in the link you are welcome to do so.
If you have any specific questions you can contact me on Davo.Benjamin@gmail.com

[BrianEdwards]

I imagine you have already discussed with the Stake Presidency the various concerns about how to ensure data privacy. The Forum is full of posts about this subject, with the dual-realities of the need to have shared documents to effectively move the work forward, and the need to keep data private for legal and/or ethical reasons.

It would be good for you to share what methods you have in place to keep your data secure from unintended access, and if that was something you looked into for the various tools. You may simply be using Google Drive's default permission access. Or perhaps you feel the "Action Item" data is generic enough that it wouldn't matter if somebody accessed it, although I imagine there's always items that are discussed in these meetings that should be kept from general disclosure. We all understand that it's a really grey area, but we also do have that responsibility to keep member information private, whether that's record-type of info, or discussions about personal issues that we need to do what we can to keep from ever getting outside our control.